mylittleeye's Metal Music Gear Setup

[update 2021-06-21 - These seem to be going for silly money now! See here -

https://guitar.com/news/gear-news/the-cribs-call-reissue-squier-musuar-second-hand-prices-top-1300/ ]

I've been a fan of short scale offsets since forever. This is a reverse take on the old Jag-stang mongrel body shape mashup; the way it should've been done? It looks and plays gorgeous, with oodles of sustain compared to my Pawn Shop series Mustang; it's significantly weightier too.

The stock humbucker is a so-so Fender MP-H1F Modern Player Telecaster humbucker bridge pickup. It may well become a project guitar as I'm curious to put a P90 in it for something a bit brasher or perhaps some lipsticks for the bling!

I had no instrument with a whammy bar which is how this caught my eye. The switches on this 'Mus-uar' also feature on/off and phase settings; another excuse I used to justify getting it.

Seems this guitar was available for just a few months in 2016, supposedly only 150 or so were made and they were all gone before I'd umm'd and ahh'd enough to make up my mind to get one. I waited a long while for one to come up on ebay; I've since seen them go for twice the original price but fortunately I got lucky!

The Casino Coupe has in my view a couple of advantages over its older sibling. The smaller 339 sized body is little bit more manageable being closer to Les Paul proportions. The fretboard is more accessible too, joining the body at the 19th fret rather than the regular Casino's 16th.

I find the Coupe's "muted" acoustic tone perfect for quiet practice and experimentation. It's the first guitar I reach for to jam along with music on the telly or for YouTube tutorials - It's also the guitar I wish I'd had in my RAF barrack room when I first tried to learn the instrument in my late teens, and failed because I was too self-conscious about broadcasting my mindless noodling to my buddies up the corridor!

This was an advantage cited by Paul McCartney as a reason for the Beatles deciding on their hollow bodied Epiphones: "They had to be loud enough to be played unplugged in hotel rooms, but not quite loud as accoustic gutars to be played in hotel rooms and raise complaints. Because we were constanlty touring, living in hotels, and there John and I wrote songs. Half of our songs from the touring days were written in hotel rooms on semi-accoustics unplugged."

Plugged in it doesn't disappoint. I was surprised at how versatile the P90s are; they more than meet my needs, playing at mostly clean or edge of breakup levels. I'm not a high gain rocker and so I've never struggled with the feedback issues commonly parroted in reviews. It can still roar when needs must, however if you plan on playing louder than The Beatles, Rolling Stones or Oasis then this ain't the guitar for you!

I got mine for £200 from a lorry driver who'd travelled with it everywhere in his cab. It has a couple of holes in the soundboard where a Bigsby trem had been tried out and removed but but this damage, whilst it looked dramatic, I think is mostly just cosmetic - it already has acoustic f holes on either side so what's the worst too two more little ones can do? My solution has been to mask them with a couple of little stickers of a spider and a fly - a subtle nod to the Stones song and the most artful fix I could come up with, given my talent for luthiery.

This particular instrument has proven a fun and characterful bargain, all things considered!